


Training

by jalendavi_lady



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon - First Anime, Community: fma_fic_contest, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-03
Updated: 2009-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:23:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jalendavi_lady/pseuds/jalendavi_lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy left his newly adopted kitty home alone for the first time today. Let's see what happens when he comes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Training

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Pretentiousness And Pomposity (501-1000 words) prompt at [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/fma_fic_contest/profile)[**fma_fic_contest**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/fma_fic_contest/) . It placed third.

It had been a very long day.

Breda and Fuery had believed yet another wild rumor, which had meant a lunchtime diatribe on how he had been down to the undercity with Winry Rockbell and Sheska, there were no zombies anywhere down there, and that if they didn't believe their commanding officer, they were welcome to talk to either of the girls. He'd even let them do so on military time without reporting it, so long as they stopped obsessing when they were supposed to be working.

Hawkeye pulled over in front of his home.

It was going to be good to have an evening alone, just he and his new cat. At least Lucky had showed no signs of believing in zombies.

“Sir, something's not right.”

He looked out the window at the house with some alarm. Hawkeye didn't say things like that unless she meant it.

The drapes in one of the front windows had been knocked off one bracket. The bar was barely hanging on to the other. The dangling mounds of cloth looked...

“Are those rips, or am I seeing things?”

“Those are rips.”

He tugged on his gloves, making sure he was still wearing them and that the ignition cloth was firm on his fingertips. “Cover me?”

The answer was the sound of her checking to be absolutely sure her service gun was fully loaded and ready to be fired.

…

The door was still locked, with no sign anyone had so much as breathed on the doorknob since he had left that morning.

The entryway and living room were nearly a shambles.

The drapes were indeed ripped.

One heirloom book had been tipped off the table where he'd set it after doing some light reading last night – no apparent damage, but who could tell what might show in another week of use?

There were scratch marks on the arm of his favorite chair.

He and Hawkeye looked at each other.

“You did know to limit the area a young cat can roam unattended until it learns what not to do in the house, sir?”

“Urm.”

“Ah.”

…

The kitchen was, miraculously, intact.

The little footprints on the tile made it clear that this was indeed a miracle, and if Roy had put much stock in beneficial deities he would have immediately offered loud and needlessly formal prayers of thanksgiving.

As it was, he settled for pouring himself a quick drink from a bottle (which thankfully was not broken in a wet puddle on the floor) into a shot glass (that was thankfully not full of little gray hairs).

He downed it in one gulp as Hawkeye quite visibly tried not to laugh.

...

There were paw prints -- paw. prints. -- on the toilet seat in the bathroom, and clear signs something furry had spent part of the day curled up in the sink, with enough of a scratch pattern on the undercabinet door that Roy was absolutely sure he knew exactly how that something had gotten there.

After the living room, he was just thankful the curtain around the bathtub hadn't been torn, mangled, or pulled down.

…

His bedroom was just as he had left it.

Complete with a little gray cat curled up blissfully asleep on his pillow.

They both stared down at her.

After a minute or two, as if sensing the disapproval in the air, she opened her eyes, lifted her head, uncurled as if she had done nothing but innocently sleep all day, sat up, curled her tail elegantly around her front paws, looked straight up at his face...

...and meowed as if he was the worst owner in the world for having left her all day in a house with no people to play with and fill her food dish and scratch behind her ears.

(No matter that he _had_ left food out for her. And that it was only half-eaten, with a quarter of the rest tracked through the hallway. Along with half the cat litter from the box.)

And then she tilted her head just so as to maximize the ease with which he could scratch behind said poorly neglected ears.

“Hawkeye, do you know anything about the house training of cats?”

…

An hour later, after Roy carried Lucky through every room of the house and tapping her nose after giving her a good long look at what she had done each place she had done something – because Hawkeye said that tap was a mother cat's way of saying “NO!” in a firm voice – Hawkeye bid him good luck and left.

She had fixed the drapes while he had been dealing with Lucky, so at least the damage wasn't visible to the neighbors anymore.

Lucky looked up at him from the floor. “Mrr?”

He sighed, reached down, and scratched behind her ears. “Come on, Lucky. We need to put together a cat room you can stay in during the day, and I think that spare bedroom I never bothered to furnish should do just fine.”

…

“MROWWWW! MRWOOOOOOOOOW!”

The feline siren went off the moment Roy closed the door.

He'd given her a day's worth of food, two days' worth of water, a completely restored and cleaned litter box, and cat toys. She had a newly-transmuted climbing tower that in Roy's opinion looked a lot better than the one he'd seen in a pet store window two months ago, and she actually seemed to like it. She had a brand-new catnip mouse. And he'd moved her cushion in there from his bedroom floor.

“MROWWWWWW!”

He couldn't leave her in there if she was going to cry about it all day. Hawkeye would be there in less than thirty minutes.

In a moment of inspiration, he went back to his bedroom and grabbed the -- _his_ \-- pillow.

He put it in the room beside Lucky. She mrred at him contentedly, tail around her feet.

He sighed.


End file.
